


The Easy (Weighted) Silence

by alicekittridge



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, Feelings, Heavy Angst, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:55:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29258562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: You wanted to reach into her, take whatever it was and put it on your own shoulders.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	The Easy (Weighted) Silence

**Author's Note:**

> This has been trying to come out for weeks. It finally did after sobbing over episode 9 again. It's quite angsty, so I'm sorry if that's not your jam. But for those of you who do enjoy it, happy reading, and thank you for doing so xx

**A** movie plays on the television, a monochrome focus of attention, something that takes a team effort. Dani is warm beside you, her head on your shoulder, curled into you, unspeaking. She’d only spoken when she had to. It was a day at work where speaking was a performance of its own, for her, an act that seemed harder to keep up the worse her bad days got. Tight smiles and thank yous. Stiff limbs sagging under an invisible, heavy weight. Eyes that were dim with an emotion you couldn’t put a name to. And all the while, her suffering made you suffer. Moments like that, you felt almost helpless. You wanted to reach into her, take whatever it was and put it on your own shoulders. Let it settle and tell her _Talk to me_ and try to understand the burdensome beast. Regarding it, Dani is a clam, preferring to keep the acidic pearl to herself.

“You wouldn’t understand it,” she’d told you once, in the early onset, knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the sink’s counter.

“I can try,” you’d said.

“Let me try now,” you want to tell her, while you’re comfortable on the sofa. “Spill your weight to me so I can help you bear it.” The words bubble in your throat, almost escape, but Dani shifts, pressing closer, wrapping an arm around you with a sigh. You lean your head against hers, pressing a kiss to her hair.

Then, so quietly you barely hear it, “Will you make love to me?”

You pull away, studying her. Her struggle is stamped into her features: creased brow, desperate eyes, mouth pulled into a frown. You cup her face, your heart feeling tantamount to a boulder, knowing the real question. _Do you love me? Do you love me still?_

“Yes,” you say, nodding. Gently, you cradle her face in one hand and with the other, tuck a falling strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Her lips, when you kiss them lightly, press back to yours, and she sighs. In relief, you think, at the distraction. You’ll give her as many kisses as she needs.

Slowly, Dani opens, accepting your movements when you press her into the couch, when your fingers work at the large buttons at the front of her navy sleep shirt. She wraps you in her arms, her touch light, almost absent. This, you know, is the kind of situation that requires meandering kisses, the kind that allows her to feel you in a different way. You begin at her mouth, then trail left across her cheek, down to her neck, trailing your tongue across the silky skin there, feeling Dani’s quiet intake of breath. You repeat it before moving lower, to the curve of her shoulder. She had liked you to bite there once; it was an accidental discovery, not in Dani’s bedroom at Bly but at a hotel in Washington, D.C., where you’d bitten down to muffle the cry escaping your lips as orgasm hit. You remember feeling guilty about it afterwards, rubbing the mark with the pad of your thumb as if that would make it vanish, but the dark of Dani’s eyes, the _want_ in them, was enough to turn the guilt into something warmer. Now, though, you only nibble, and soothe it with lips, meeting her eyes to be sure she’d like you to travel lower.

A single nod.

So you do.

You kiss across shoulders and collarbones, across breasts and between them, lingering to gently trap her nipples between your teeth—something you’d done that first night, far away, and has been a favorite of Dani’s ever since—and pull. It gains a moan and a hand falling onto your back. You kiss under a breast, down the plane of her stomach, pausing to rest your chin above the waistband of her pyjama pants. A question.

A whisper of an answer. “Yes.”

You lick a line where your chin had been. The crease between Dani’s brows had been troubled, but now it speaks of want. Her breathing is stilted. Your own nearly matches hers.

You take your time in removing the garments. Gooseflesh appears when one of Dani’s legs is left bare to the cool air floating from the window unit. You shuffle backwards on the couch, the better to bend and plant kisses up her leg. She watches, gaze intensifying the closer your mouth gets to her, breaths becoming shorter.

She utters a whisper of your name at the first careful touch of your tongue, and trembling breaths follow as the moments drag on. It’s been months, by now, and you had thought this sort of intimacy was locked away forever—which, you think, would’ve been completely fine; there are other, simpler ways to make love—but it’s safe to admit, once Dani’s fingers weave between yours on her hip and her other one is anchored in your hair, that you’ve missed this. The syrup of it all, how it thrills and satisfies you to know the cause of her pleasure is you, the moans and gasps and whimpers in response to your actions. Your own arousal responding to Dani, a demanding ache between your thighs. Still, you keep your soft pace, using only lips and tongue and teeth for long minutes, and she curls into you, shaking, tearing her hand from yours to muffle a cry into her palm. You bring her down, trailing your lips upward again until you reach her ear.

“All right?” you murmur.

Her hands cup your face. Dani nods once. There is less tension in her expression. She’s a little more grounded than she had been earlier. A little more herself. You kiss her forehead. Remind her, “Still here.” Another kiss. You do not ask if _she_ can feel any of this, your touches and ministrations, if she can feel when Dani comes, or the bliss of satisfaction.

Dani’s hands move from your face to your jeans, fingers undoing the button, your stomach responding with a sharp but not unpleasant jolt. “You don’t have to,” you tell her.

“Want to,” Dani says.

You nod. She drags the zipper down and you help her get her hand inside, touching her wrist lightly, not guiding but supporting.

“Feel me,” you whisper when the rhythm starts. Feel me so you know you’re here. Feel me so you know I’m not sick of you, even now. So you know I love you.

You lay half on top of her afterwards, spent, kissing yourself from her hand while silence envelops you again. There are many things to say, many things to remind her of, but this will do for now.


End file.
